How we made our drug-war drama Sujo: “Many kids born into this crisis are now becoming adults”
Identifying Features filmmakers Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez tell us about their latest drama Sujo, which follows a boy seeking to escape cycles of violence in rural Mexico.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at Sundance this year, Sujo is Mexican directors Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s forceful drama about a four-year-old boy whose cartel gunman father is murdered. Raised by his Aunt Nemesia in the outskirts of a city in central Mexico that’s plagued by the local cartels, Sujo is exposed both to the vastness of nature and to his aunt’s nurturing spirit, which is infused with a mysticism rooted in Mexico’s ancient culture.
Later, circumstances force him to move to Mexico City, where he encounters another female mentor at the capital’s free university: literature teacher Susan. In his resulting determination to enter university, his life becomes a striking contrast to the violence unfolding around him – until his cousin visits, attempting to borrow money to pay the cartel. Will Sujo escape the vicious cycle of criminality that he inherited from his father?
Highlighting the stark reality of Mexico’s drug war, and the scarring effects that it leaves on the lives of young people, Sujo is the third feature collaboration by Rondero and Valadez. It’s a companion film to their earlier film about migration, 2020’s Identifying Features, which was filmed in the state of Guanajuato. To film Sujo, Rondero and Valadez went back to the same region, a part of rural Mexico that’s rapidly becoming one of the country’s most dangerous regions.
Why did you want to tell a story about the drug war from a child’s perspective?
Astrid Rondero: When we were researching actors for our previous film [Identifying Features], we went to rural areas to talk to the people there. From hearing the stories of young people, many of them had crossed the border to the US, so they had the experience of migration. The kids that stayed started working with the local cartels in some capacity, and it seemed like they didn’t have many chances. So, at that point I told Fernanda that these kids choosing migration to stay outside of the cartels – or staying and becoming part of that thing – is a very interesting story. And that’s how the story of Sujo was born.
What was it like working with them?
Fernanda Valadez: That was one of the greatest challenges. When we were younger and working as assistant directors, Astrid was usually called for commercials or films that included young people. So, she had that experience of the possibilities and limitations of a four-year-old. We divided our work, and Astrid was mostly with the actors, particularly with the kids as she was amazing in building an imaginary world that was safe for them to work in. We had two scripts for the scenes, one for the kids and one for the adults. What we said off-screen to the kids was different than what was written in the actual script.
How did you ensure their safety on set?
Rondero: Fernanda is originally from Guanajuato, and the reality is that area is changing quickly. We’d filmed there before, and the community already knew who we were, so the key element for us was finding a safety net of people around us alongside working with the authorities. We were very careful to move around areas that we already knew. We had a sad encounter with an armed group, but we were very lucky that we had the support of the government, so everything ended up being okay.
Do you relate to Sujo’s story on a personal level?
Valadez: We don’t have that experience of such adversity, and that’s something that we knew we had to accept and use it as a narrative device in the last part of our film. I relate by being from that region, of knowing some of the kids and women in the community and how this little town has become empty because of migration or displacement. For us, as a generation of Mexicans who became adults when the crisis of violence began 20 years ago, it’s realising that many kids who were born into this crisis are now becoming adults. So, it’s a question about how the world opens or closes to a kid born in this context.
Rondero: The other thing that we tried to enter in the story is the difficulties dealing with your inheritance, which is something that I especially can relate to because of a difficult father figure [in my family]. Now my father is no longer here, but I really relate with the character in that context. Also, we used to be teachers so, for us, the meaning and the scope of the things you can do for a young person is important. That’s why we relate so strongly with the last part of the story in Mexico City.
Can you tell us about the film’s palette and your collaboration with director of photography Ximena Amann?
Rondero: I know Ximena from school; we’ve been working together for a long time. The only moment that we stopped working together was with the previous film, Identifying Features. So, it’s second nature for us to communicate. We worked on a storyboard a week before shooting, and that really helped. For instance, we had a lunar schedule so we could shoot at full moon. We didn’t want to illuminate with electrical lights, we wanted just basic electricity for stuff. I think that for Ximena, the most interesting experience was something that Fernanda and I learned from our previous film: to have a balance and work with as little equipment as we can, with as much time as we can, to allow enough time to have a bad day and go back to get the scenes together.
How important was it to include these strong female characters, Sujo’s aunt, Nemesia, and his teacher Susan?
Valadez: I think that’s the way it’s been in Mexico: the resistance to violence in the communities is being led by women, the mothers and sisters of disappeared people. They became activists by looking for them and realising that they’re not just looking for their sons or brothers, but for all sons and brothers. Their active participation in the resistance against violence has become a big movement in Mexico, and we wanted to honour that. Likewise, we tried to express that the education Sujo receives is not only intellectual. Of course it’s important going to the university, but it’s even more important that the spiritual and emotional education he gets from his aunt allows him to be a loving person and open to the world.
Why did you choose a rural setting for Sujo’s childhood?
Rondero: One of the things that ignited our imagination was the area that the film was set. It’s an ancient area with a lot of vestiges of previous cultures. There’s a lot of energy [there]. We wanted to have the character of Aunt Nemesia rooted to the earth. She is like the spiritual leader of Sujo, his nurturer who will teach him morals, his connection with the earth and the mysticism of the world. That’s something that we also explored in our previous film, that we have this terrible violence in Mexico, and sometimes it’s difficult to see that this is happening in such beautiful places.
Valadez: And because the story of Sujo’s childhood is told in an episodic way and open to all the mysteries of the universe, we didn’t want to express that in a descriptive way. We wanted to use a metaphorical way that’s related to the spirit of his aunt. Feeling that there are more real things than what we think, more concrete than our daily material life.